NationalOversimplification

Convenient- National Oversimplification Axiom

It is often the most convenient to think that any "American" (person, company or institution, especially if goverment funded) acts for the interest of "America" (or replace America with country X).

The "American interest" alone is hard to define. Sg. with beneficial result for 99% of population is considered, by most, American interest; sg. bad for 99% NOT: the judgement for the rest of the cases varies by individual.

Note that it is easy to draw conclusions from this convenient, but false assumption. One can say this is just a "simplified assumption": true, so much simplified to be either true or false without any reasonable certainty, that is useless: see "Reality" below for the good assumption). Even if drawing conclusion from bad assumption is not reasonable, it is convenient in this case, and allows one to retire a certain case with a certain conclusion that she might even think "logical". However, conslusion from false assumption can be true or false: we just do NOT know. This "National Oversimplification" assumption and any cheap conclusiontion drawn from it is a TREMENDOUS HELP for eg. government funded institutions to commit abuse and get away with it. If enough percentage of the population applies the convenient "National Oversimplification" instead of a realistic assumption => gravy train for supreme criminals.

Reality - tangled: no free lunch

People INDIVIDUALLY act on their OWN (perceived, and perhaps biased, via information, money or threat) INTEREST. This is quite obvious (except maybe for someone hypnotized?). However, this realistic assumption helps little in real life. It does NOT allow to draw such cheap/quick conclusions as the convenient false assumption.

It leaves the thinker with the tremendous task to investigate individual motivations, that are often invisible (eg. background money / info / threat; most actions are non-public anyway, actually, these types are almost never advertised). One's motivations are rarely obvious; we must identify the pattern in the noticed acts. In any case, it is extremely hard to come up with a model, with reasonably tuned parameters that models reality the best.

Those with clear motivation (such as the hyper-wealthy) remains in the background and what you see in the foreground (politics, biz, media) are people who can, and without doubt are biased by the dominant power. (without doubt == you can clearly see the presence of a magnitude higher amount of money in just the political campaign than the total admitted money earned by politicians).

How would you bias media ? Be careful to choose the HR crew and editors: those who, by their very own beliefs and preference broadcast the mindset you want. Those who already have the beliefs what you need when they apply. Much easier/cheaper than choosing the wrong persons and changing their basic beliefs later.

To understand the actions of politicians, one certainly must consider the supreme power that biases politics (how evident!). It is only possible to see the effect of the power => laws, tremendous amount of mind-influence, mostly via push media, and FUD (fear, uncertainty and doubt). Political speaches had become secondary in the toolset. Remember that you NEVER see the real motivations, you never see how motivations are biased. You only see the outcome. Making a model that matches well is hard.

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Examples

You can think of many examples when people draw conclusion from National Oversimplification.

• politician P from country X => P speaks for (or in the interest of) country X (while often exactly against country X; wether there is consent in country X or not; on what he says or the opposite);
• government of country X
• army of country X ... (familiar ?)
• minority (eg. a militant group) from country X
• CIA is American, therefore => it just cannot establish an unelected government (because elections are American (even more wrong))

Always remember that a conclusion drawn from false assumption can be true or false. Relying on it is stupid. Labelling others idiots / absentminded / conspiracist / whatever because of their hesitation to draw conclusion from bad assumption is rude and short-sighted. Don't do it.

Only try to draw conclusions from uncertain assumptions as a "throwaway branch" experiment, when you grow a model by examining several branches in the hope that one branch might be such a good match to reality that is worth to keep.

The assumption that people INDIVIDUALLY acting on their OWN (perceived, and perhaps biased) INTEREST does NOT help to draw such cheap/quick conclusions. So anyone who dares to face reality, instead of possibly false (==useless) conclusion, creates herself a giant, perhaps unpleasant investigation task that she might never get to the end of.

The difficulty of the logical path does not justify choosing the easy path (and calling that logical).

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Links, search words, brainstorming

• game theory
• local, global optimum
• push-media
• OccamsRazor
• YourGuideToFreedom